Late last week it was reported that a New-York based company; Adafruit Industries were offering $2000 to any individual or group that could develop an open source Kinect driver hack that could bring the technology to other platforms outside of Xbox360.

Today, it was announced that someone has successfully done exactly that task. The outcome was fairly inevitable although the time taken is what is leaving many speechless. Kinect was released three days ago in the United States and is still yet to be released in Europe.

Microsoft weren’t the least happy about Adafruit offering the bounty, who raised the offer from $1000 to $2000 in response to Microsoft’s negativity. A company spokesperson for Microsoft told CNET that “Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products,” The spokesperson followed up by saying "With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant."

Phillip Torrone, Senior editor for Make magazine and a part investor of the bounty said the idea behind offering the bounty was because "Its amazing hardware that shouldn't just be locked up for Xbox 360,” which Torrone told CNET in an email. "Its 'radar camera' being able to get video and distance as a sensor input from commodity hardware is huge."

Torrone believes that like the Nintendo Wii remote did, Kinect could offer a lot of opportunities to education and robotics.

A YouTube video was posted of desktop control of Kinect although it shows control of the motor which is said to be the easiest part of Kinect to control. The question is, how will Microsoft respond?